An online ‘book’ on Internet, browsers

If you would like to know more about how the Internet and browsers work but are in no mood to grapple with geeky jargon, consider heading to the website '20 Things I Learned about Browsers and the Web' (http://www.20thingsilearned.com), and flipping through a virtual online 'book' - with your mouse, of course.

It is the team behind the Google Chrome browser that has come up with this 20-chapter 'book' in collaboration with an illustrator, Christoph Niemann.

It is an easy-to-read guide to many of the things technological that we encounter when we use the web and browsers. In itself, it is also shows how far modern browser technology has advanced - its designers have created a book-like feel using HTML 5, the latest version of the mark-up language that is used to build web pages. (If you have an 'old' browser that does not support HTML 5, you will still be able to read the 'book' but maybe not 'flip' through the pages and experience the interactivity of the graphics - the latest versions of all major browsers support HTML 5 to some extent or the other).

The illustrations and the interactivity make the 'book' fun to read. The topics covered include the Internet, cloud computing, web apps and the nuts and bolts of the technology that makes browsing and browsers possible - like HTML and Javascript. Security and privacy are topic threads that runs through the latter part of the 'book' - things like browser cookies, malware, and phishing are also dealt with. And it presents us with glimpses of how browsers and the web will shape up in the times to come.